Day 1 2012 Texans Training Camp – We made it. Thanks.

Finally. Training camp. Actual football stuff to talk about, though some might be overly interested in haircuts and veganism.

Once again, I would like to thank the kind readers and commenters here for helping us get through the most difficult blog time during the very long off-season. Yet another benefit of last year’s playoffs is it made dead time season shorter, so I thank the team as well.

Focus of My Camp News (Please skip these preliminaries if you just want non-chatty news news)

This is now my 7th (!) season blogging about the team, and it seems like just yesterday. I sort of see team blogging as having phases:

1. In season: Easy blogging. We watch games, we see them, we discuss them. Hopefully it is good stuff, but I find there are more comments after losses. Please note, I am totally okay with you leaving a comment after a win just to say some newspaper-friendly derivative of “bleep yeah.”

2. After season but before training camp: Hard blogging. Feels too long (especially when the Astros/Rockets are um, doing unpleasant things). Important time to write about because the team you build during draft, free agency/coaching acquisitions is the team that determines winning/losing. It’s the time when people are looking for team news, often have a hard time finding it because stuff that is happening is mostly not on the field. So, I feel like this is the most important time for me to blog, even if it is just to the most diehardian of you.

3. Training camp. Too easy blogging. There are too many things to write about. This is when I’d like to have a radio show. I could sit here infinity time and just write zillions of words, and there is so much information out there. But that would not be kind to the shape of my backside nor to my mental health.

So, given the choices, my preference is to write things that you might not be seeing elsewhere. Because if someone else is writing about it, then I don’t have to. And see my role to sort of cut through to what is important and tell you what is the real deal as I see it.

You will see lots and lots of camp hype. About players running around in shorts. I try not to participate in that.

What I spend a lot of time at this time of year is trying to figure out what is hype and hyperbole, and what is coach talk, and what is real. Won’t say I always get that right, but if you are a long time reader here and play fantasy football, you weren’t completely surprised by the emergence of Arian Foster his rookie year, drafted Arian Foster his breakout first full season, and you didn’t draft Dominick Davis his final season.

Day 1 Camp

As always if you have a particular question about something, please ask, and I’m pretty good about answering if an answer exists. And unlike cable news pundits, if I don’t think something has an answer based on facts, observations, I’m not going to make something up. Imagine that. (In other words, don’t gripe about my updates being not detailed enough. The comments of my posts are usually like reading a second blog post).

Difference Between OTAs/Minicamps and Training Camp: What is worth noting is during OTAs/minicamps it seemed like there was more time spent on drills, technique, teaching in position groups. On day 1, they spent some time with this, but very early in the camp, they jumped into WRs against CBs, 7 on 7, more collaborative things that look more like how football is played instead of separate drill stuff.

I think they’ve transitioned that way for a while. A few years ago, the Texans were having slow offensive starts during games for no apparent reason–false start year, penalty there, drops, too much punting. The following year, they did more jumping right into football-looking things right away in camp to sort of simulate how games go. Yeah, you warm up, do some drills, but you go from the National Anthem, to full contact football on game day.

Matt Schaub/Andre Johnson: The obvious difference between OTAs and Training Camp was seeing both Schaub and Johnson working with the team. They looked normal. Which shouldn’t be news but is news. Andre Johnson did a diving catch in camp. Which is both awesome and AYYYYYY!

Heat Acclimation: First day they cut the outside practice short to go inside the practice bubble in the AC so that the players can have more time to acclimate to the heat.

Personally, I thought the temps felt cooler now than they did during OTAs/Minicamps being held later in the morning. Because today there was a slight breeze. There’s plenty of hotter training camp days to come.

Cutting the outside practice short was disappointing to fans who came to the open practice but most of the best stuff happened outside. I’m not sure how long they will do this heat acclimation thing going inside. I wouldn’t expect that they do it too long. With this many players, it is a little cramped in the practice bubble, and Kubiak doesn’t like his older players practicing on turf. Inside they worked on some special teams and some technique things.

Training Camp Battles: As you may know, the main training camp battles/issues are: 1. Right side of the offensive line; 2. Wide receivers behind Andre Johnson and Kevin Walter; 3. Field goal kicker.

I know that there is a lot of teeth gnashing on these issues, but I’m not very concerned relatively speaking. Very concerned is the year the Texans went into the season with zero experienced guys at cornerback and starting a rookie corner. The 2012 training camp battles are more just intriguing. It is possible that these battles mean upgrades at the positions. And the only way you know that for sure is taking the training wheels off, which is what they did with their off-season decisions.

Notably, Kubiak mentioned today that the field goal kickers will get more work early in camp in front of the team because it is a real competition. So far from minicamp, Shayne Graham appeared to have the lead after putting on a long field goal kicking show in front of the team and media.

Really, my major concern with camp is injuries. Get these guys learned up with no season ending/harming injuries in camp, preseason games. Yes, teams of all fans have that concern, but the Texans don’t have some of the more positional issues that some other teams have or what they’ve had in the past.

I think that from top to bottom, the Texans have one of the strongest coaching staffs in the league. Which gives you much more trust in player changes than the never-had-a-good-defense pre-Wade Phillips days. It’s taken time to get the guys they want as position coaches and assistants. But I have confidence that the offensive line staff will get the right side of the line together and functional because they’ve done it before.

As for the wide receivers, the 3-5 WRs aren’t going to have a ton of targets because there are too many targets for this offense. They need health of their starters and serviceable, learning upside for the 3-5 guys.

The most real time news from writers, players, fans comes from Twitter. It’s like mini blog posts. If you are not on Twitter already as a NFL fan, you should. Trust me. I was skeptical about this at first but not any more.